What are the types of wound exudate?
Types of Wound Exudate There are four types of wound drainage: serous, sanguineous, serosanguinous, and purulent.
What is exudate from a wound?
Exudate consists of fluid and leukocytes that move to the site of injury from the circulatory system in response to local inflammation. This inflammatory response leads to blood vessel dilatation and increased permeability, resulting in increased production of exudate.
What causes exudate in a wound?
Wound exudate is produced as a normal part of the healing process. During the inflammatory response blood vessel walls dilate and become more porous allowing leakage of protein-rich fluid into the wounded area (White, 2000).
What are the three types of exudate?
Types of Exudate
- Serous – a clear, thin and watery plasma.
- Sanguinous – a fresh bleeding, seen in deep partial- and full-thickness wounds.
- Serosanguineous – thin, watery and pale red to pink in color.
- Seropurulent – thin, watery, cloudy and yellow to tan in color.
Does exudate mean infection?
Exudate that becomes a thick, milky liquid or a thick liquid that turns yellow, tan, gray, green, or brown is almost always a sign that infection is present. This drainage contains white blood cells, dead bacteria, wound debris, and inflammatory cells.
What is considered normal wound exudate?
Let’s look at the types of exudates commonly seen with wounds. Serous drainage is clear, thin, watery plasma. It’s normal during the inflammatory stage of wound healing and smaller amounts is considered normal wound drainage. However, a moderate to heavy amount may indicate a high bioburden.
How do you treat a wound exudate?
In local wound management, dressings and topical negative pressure therapy devices are the main option for managing exudate. Patients with underlying venous hypertension will require compression therapy.
Should I clean wound exudate?
Maintenance of a moist wound healing environment is widely accepted as the ‘ideal’ environment for wounds to heal. Wound fluid or ‘exudate’ in the right amount can bathe the wound with nutrients and actively cleanse the wound’s surface.
Is exudate good or bad?
Exudate production is a normal feature of healing wounds. However, when the exudate produced is too much, too little or of the wrong composition, a wide variety of problems can occur, ranging from psychosocial issues to delayed healing.
How do you remove exudate from a wound?
Where does the exudate from a wound come from?
Exudate refers to the draining of liquid from open wounds in the human body, reports Medscape.com. This drainage comes from the liquid created by the body as a result of tissue damage. When redressing the wound, the exudate must be checked for proper consistency, odor, quantity and color.
Why do we need to know about exudate drainage?
The drainage that seeps out of wounds can be called many things, but as wound care clinicians know, the technical term is exudate. This liquid, which is produced by the body in response to tissue damage, can tell us what we need to know about the wound. And while we want wounds to be moist, we don’t want them to be overly moist.
What do the different types of exudate look like?
The specific types of exudate — whether they are purulent, seropurulent or sanguinous — indicates how the wound is progressing and healing. Serous wound drainage looks clear or straw colored.
How can you tell the color of a wound exudate?
We also can consider the color and viscosity of the wound exudate. Thick, milky white to tan could be associated with autolytic debridement and the liquefaction of the necrotic tissue or lymphatic exudate. Whereas thick, yellow to green may indicate a high bioburden in the wound.
Where does exudate come from in a wound?
Exudate (drainage), a liquid produced by the body in response to tissue damage, is present in wounds as they heal. It consists of fluid that has leaked out of blood vessels and closely resembles blood plasma.
The specific types of exudate — whether they are purulent, seropurulent or sanguinous — indicates how the wound is progressing and healing. Serous wound drainage looks clear or straw colored.
We also can consider the color and viscosity of the wound exudate. Thick, milky white to tan could be associated with autolytic debridement and the liquefaction of the necrotic tissue or lymphatic exudate. Whereas thick, yellow to green may indicate a high bioburden in the wound.
Is it normal for a wound to have fluid?
Although it is normal for some wounds to produce a considerable amount of exudate, knowing how much exudate the wound had and continues to have is an important key to proper wound healing. This is important as abnormal amount of fluid from wound site can be a sign of infection.